In the case of either a real or false trend or idea, it is
common that the article starts with an anecdote that shows us the trend or idea
at work. Instead of saying, “people are eating ants,” we get a description of a
dish or a pleased gourmand crunching away. Beginning inside an anecdote brings
the story alive and makes the reader react emotionally before the mind engages
with the facts of the matter. An early advocate of starting inside a case
history instead of with a statement of thesis was the Roman poet Horace, when
he suggested in Ars Poetica about two
thousand years ago that the writer “begin in the middle” (in media res). Horace, like most great writers, understood that
showing something was much more powerful than merely telling people about it.

How strange, then, that the New York Times would publish an article that reports a fact, but
only provides case histories that go counter to that fact. Moreover, the
article begins with a case history counter to the facts under report, which
means that by the time most readers get to the facts, the anecdote has
convinced them of the very opposite of what the facts prove.

What isn’t surprising is that the article disproves a
long-held right-wing belief and that the anecdotes in the article support the
disproved belief.

The issue is food stamp fraud, people illegally using food
stamps to buy liquor, gasoline or other forbidden items. In “Food Stamp Fraud, Rare but Troubling,” Kim Severson correctly reports that food
stamp fraud is practically non-existent, a mere 1.3% of the total of food stamp
aid given, down from more than 4% in the 1990s before debit cards replaced
paper food stamps. Compare this paltry 1.3% to 10%, the current figure for
Medicare and Medicaid fraud (typically by physicians, as the Severson’s article
does not mention). Or compare the $3 billion lost to food stamp fraud,
overpayments and government audits combined to the estimated $100 billion a
year that insurance fraud costs insurers and their customers.

I’m not denying that the anecdotes occurred. Certainly, a
relatively small number of people try to defraud the government by misusing
food stamps, but the statistics suggest that the problem is practically
non-existent and not worth mentioning or worrying about. The demagogues stating that food stamp fraud
is an enormous problem are trying to promote antipathy toward recipients of
social benefits, the so-called “welfare queens” accusation. The facts of the article demolish this view
as it concerns food stamps.

We can only speculate on how this story developed: Did the
editor assign the writer an article that would support the right-wing view that
food stamp fraud is rampant, a reason they want to cut the program (and let
hundreds of thousands face food insecurity) and did the facts turn the article
a different way, leaving the writer with nothing but anecdotes to support the
editor’s goal? Or was it the opposite: a conservative reporter trying to put a
right-wing face on the facts through anecdotes that go counter to those facts?

Or did the writer pit anecdotes against facts as a way to
present a “fair and balanced” story? If so, the writer forgot that anecdotes
are as much like facts as apples are like oranges.

Unless of course, the writer has read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, in which the
eminent social scientist uses numerous controlled experiments to prove that
people will believe a single anecdote that conforms to their ideas over multiple
facts that disprove them. In other
words, the writer could have cleverly constructed a story to influence the
reader to believe the very thing that the article disproves through providing
random anecdotes that go counter to the underlying facts. The facts say, “No food stamp fraud,” but the
richly detailed case histories may convince us otherwise.

“Food Stamp Fraud, Rare but Troubling” is thus a masterpiece
in deniable deception. The article claims to prove one thing—and it does,
except for those internal heart strings plucked so expertly by the anecdotes
that sing to right-wingers that they were right all along.

If it weren’t for the entertainment value, I’d be pleased that Texas Governor Rick Perry is foundering in the Republican presidential race. After all, Governor Perry, who is in an unprecedented fourth term as chief executive of the nation's second-largest state, still might get the Republican nomination for president. If that happens there’s no telling what the voters might be fooled into doing. Just look at how far George W. Bush got.